This one is last, but by no means least. We are all good at this and most of us practise it not only daily, but hourly and by the minute. –

You don’t believe me? – Do you keep a list of things you need to do each day (and it doesn’t matter whether it is on the computer, in a notebook neatly organised, or on lots of scraps of paper as you go along)?

What do you look at, at the end of the day? – All the things on the list you didn’t get down to? – Thought so. The good news is: you’re not alone.

Interestingly, the ‘Focusing on what’s missing’ pattern often stems from the fact that we’ve been taught not to put ourselves forward when we were young.

It manifests itself in a sense that “as long as this project/task/goal isn’t finished, I haven’t accomplished anything”. So we’re climbing up this mountain of a task, and all we concentrate on is how much further/steeper we have to climb.

This leads to exhaustion or a feeling of being overwhelmed with the task. Because we’ve never stopped, looked back at what we have achieved so far and celebrated the progress we have made, we get discouraged and/or give up.